Joseph Wambaugh - The Secrets of Harry Bright

“As a matter a fact,” Sidney Blackpool nodded.

“We’ll play sometime. I like the Bel-Air course. I belong to half a dozen clubs but I don’t get a chance to play much. What do you know about my son’s murder?”

The guy could shift gears without a clutch, and before the detective could answer, Victor Watson said, “You may have read that my boy disappeared from our Palm Springs home last year and was found murdered out in the desert near a blister of a town called Mineral Springs.”

“I never read whether they caught the …”

“They didn’t,” Victor Watson said, and just for a second those irises flickered. Then he stood and walked to the window, gazing at the sun falling toward Santa Monica.

“I’m wondering what I can do for you,” Sidney Blackpool said.

“Your department’s got to get involved, Sid,” Victor Watson announced, with just a touch of fervor. “I’m not bad-mouthing Palm Springs P.D. or anybody else. But it’s been seventeen months and …”

Victor Watson was not a man to lose control and he didn’t. He smiled and returned to the sofa, sitting down beside the detective. “It’s come to my attention that my boy may have been in Hollywood the day he died. It could be that the events leading up to the murder in the desert emanated from Hollywood. In that case, Hollywood Division of the L. A. Police Department becomes the proper agency to join this investigation, right?”

“Hold on, Mister Watson.” Sidney Blackpool didn’t like this a bit. He had enough cases without being drawn into a cold Palm Springs homicide with a guy like this applying the torque.

“Listen to me, Sidney,” Victor Watson said, leaning toward the detective. “I know it’s stretching matters a bit to draw you in, but I need to keep this investigation going. I don’t know where to turn. All the goddamn money I gave the Republicans the last four years, yet the F.B.I. dropped out within three days. And the Palm Springs P.D. was finished in six months. Oh, they still call me but they don’t have leads. And my son, my boy, he …”

“I suppose I can maybe make a few calls, Mister Watson,” the detective offered. “After you tell me about the new information that makes you think Hollywood’s involved.”

“I was thirty-six years old when Jack was born,” Victor Watson said. “My daughters were already in high school when he came along. My first wife was probably too old for child-bearing, but it worked. Did it ever. He had an I.Q. of a hundred and forty. And he was a talented piano player. And he had the sweetest golf swing you have ever seen.… Tell me, do you know about depression and despair?” Without waiting for an answer Victor Watson said, “I can tell you that despair is not merely acute depression. Despair is more than the sum of many terrible parts. Depression is purgatory. Despair is hell.”

The detective almost sent the Ming-dynasty figurine spinning off the cocktail table, he snatched at the Johnnie Walker so quickly.

Victor Watson didn’t notice. He just kept talking in a monotone that was getting spooky. “Do you know how a man feels when he loses his son? He feels … incomplete. Nothing in the whole world looks the same or is the same. He goes around looking for pieces of himself. Incomplete . And … and then all his daydreams and fantasies go back to June of last year. Whatever he’s thinking about, it’s got to precede the time he got the phone call about his son. You see, he just keeps trying to turn the clock back. He wants just one more chance. For what? He can’t even say for sure. He wants to communicate. What? He isn’t sure.” And then Victor Watson breathed a sigh and said: “The ancient inherited shame of fathers and sons.”

“I’d like to help you, Mister Watson.” Sidney Blackpool was getting unaccountably warm. He unbuttoned his collar, removed his necktie and shoved it into his coat pocket.

“Hear me out, Sid,” Victor Watson said quietly. “It’s important that I lay things out … well … methodically. It’s how I am. He isn’t able to answer his phone at first, the father of a dead boy. Especially since so many people think they have to call to express condolences. One friend calls four times and finally you speak to him and he says, ‘Why didn’t you return my calls? I want to share your grief.’ And you say to him, ‘You dumb son of a bitch. If you could share any part of it, I’d give it to you! I’d give it all to you, you stupid bastard!’ And then of course I lost that friend.”

Sidney Blackpool made a mental note, as though it were a crime confession, that Victor Watson had switched persons three times before he was ready or maybe able to start telling it in the first person.

“Then for several weeks, all I could think about were the bad moments. I couldn’t remember the good times, the good things we had together, Jack and me. Only the problems. Only the bad times. You know something? Booze used to make me silly and happy. Now I hardly touch it because it makes me morose and mean. Can I freshen that?”

“Yeah.” The detective began massaging the back of his neck. He was starting to get a headache at the base of his skull. It was more than warm. It was stifling , yet he could see the papers on the polished granite desk top fluttering from an overhead air register.

“On June twenty-first of last year, my twenty-two-year-old son Jack went to Palm Springs after his last term at U.S.C. He went alone but was going to be joined by his fiancée who was a senior at U.C.L.A. He was there two days and two nights and then he was gone. So was my car. I keep a Rolls-Royce there because I sometimes fly to Palm Springs from LAX instead of driving. Our Palm Springs houseboy found the car missing and by the second night he got worried and called us. Jack was found two days later in the desert, in some godforsaken canyon near Mineral Springs. He was shot through the head and the car was burned with his body inside.”

“Was he … uh, was he …”

“Yes, he was already dead when they torched the car.”

“They?”

“He, she, they. Whoever. At first the police thought there was some sort of accident where he ran off a dirt road down into a canyon and the car caught fire. But at the autopsy they found that though he was totally burned, the inside of his lungs was hardly scorched. And there was very little carbon monoxide in his blood. And then they found a thirty-eight-caliber bullet in his head. I brought in another pathologist and he concurred. Jack was shot and was dead or dying before somebody burned him.

“The F.B.I. called it a straightforward murder, maybe a kidnapping and murder, but not within their investigative jurisdiction. The Palm Springs police’ve pretty well given up. I thought about hiring private investigators but I know the difference between movie private eyes and real ones. Even if I could find a good one, no police agency gives the time of day to private investigators.”

“So how does the L.A.P.D. get brought into this?”

“It’s the best thing that’s happened to me for a while,” Victor Watson said. “On Monday I got a notice from my Hollywood Rolls-Royce dealership that it’s time to bring the car in for service. There was a note attached saying they’d neglected to bill me for a tire purchased on June twenty-first of last year. That’s the day Jack disappeared! Of course I ran straight to the Rolls-Royce dealer, and the service manager identified a picture of Jack. My boy was there that afternoon in the Rolls and ordered a tire because his was going flat.”

“You notify Palm Springs P.D. about this?”

“Yesterday. They thanked me, of course. They said they’d make a follow-up call to the Rolls-Royce dealer. That means they’ll be told the same thing I was told and they’ll file it. But look, the crime may have originated in Hollywood. Jack may have met someone here or been kidnapped here or picked up a hitchhiker here or …”